Four Guggenheim fellowships go to Indiana University

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Four of this year's Guggenheim Fellows are professors at Indiana University Bloomington.

The election of IUB biologists Lynda Delph and Jeffrey Palmer, composer Don Freund and historian Michael Grossberg brings IU's total of Guggenheim Fellows to 117. At least one IU faculty member has earned a Guggenheim fellowship each year since 1998, and IU has more present and past fellows than all other state institutions combined.

Grossberg will use the award to complete a book on the history of child protection in the United States. Palmer will study the rampant, promiscuous exchange of genes between unrelated plants on the remote South Pacific island of New Caledonia, a hotspot for this unusual genetic phenomenon. Delph will appraise work by geneticists and gather new genetic data in order to merge evolutionary theory with knowledge gained from studies of molecular biology. Freund plans to use his Guggenheim grant to complete a major compositional project in collaboration with other musical artists.

The Guggenheim Fellowship is one of the world's most prestigious research awards for artists, humanists and scientists. Guggenheim's selections of scholars who have demonstrated "distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment" are based on advice from "hundreds of expert advisers," according to the foundation's news release. Selections must be approved by Guggenheim's board of trustees, whose members include Joyce Carol Oates, Richard A. Rifkind and Wendy Wasserstein. Since 1925, the foundation has awarded almost $240 million in grants to more than 15,500 scholars.

To speak with Delph, Palmer, Freund or Grossberg, please contact David Bricker at 812-856-9035 or brickerd@indiana.edu.